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Food processing is the set of methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food or to transform food into other forms for consumption by humans or animals either in the home or by the food processing industry. Food processing typically takes clean, harvested crops or butchered animal products and uses these to produce attractive, marketable and often long shelf-life food products. Similar processes are used to produce
animal feed.
Mass
production of food is much cheaper overall than individual production of meals
from raw ingredients. Therefore, a large profit potential exists for the
manufacturers and suppliers of processed food products. Individuals may see a
benefit in convenience, but rarely see any direct financial cost benefit in
using processed food as compared to home preparation. More and more people live
in the cities far away from where food is grown and produced. In many families
the adults are working away from home and therefore there is little time for
the preparation of food based on fresh ingredients. Benefits of food processing
include toxin removal, preservation, easing marketing and distribution tasks,
and increasing food consistency. In addition, it increases seasonal
availability of many foods, enables transportation of delicate perishable foods
across long distances, and makes many kinds of foods safe to eat by
de-activating spoilage and pathogenic micro-organisms.
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